‘Middle church’. In Old Irish a form such as *mid cill might be expected. However, the e in the first syllable, which is a consistent feature of the name Methil from its earliest forms, might have formed under the influence of G meadhon, OIr medón ‘middle’, which also appears in compounds, but consistently as a two-syllable word. Alternatively the name may have been *medon-cill, with later loss of the unstressed middle syllable.

The wider significance of this name, if it does mean ‘middle church’, is explored in WMS Introduction above.

Methil is today the name of an industrial town, now amalgamated with neighbouring Buckhaven, whose centre lies not around the site of the medieval church, which was on the River Leven, but on the coast one km to the south-east. This came about through the development of a burgh and port there in the seventeenth century, which by the early twentieth century had become Scotland’s chief coal-exporting centre (Millar 1895, ii 55; Pride 1990, 66). This was known initially as Methilltoune (1670) or Methilburgh (1795). That both these places are given the alternative name of Innerleven shows that the application of the name Innerleven was wider than it may originally have been. Innerleven was a separate settlement 0.3 km up the coast at the mouth of the River Leven, and lay in a detached part of MAI (see WMS Introduction and Innerleven WMS above).

Methil is called Methill Pans on Roy’s map of the 1753, which name recalls its other major industry at this time, namely salt-production. Roy also shows Inverleven as the separate settlement which it in fact was. On Ainslie/Fife (1775) the settlement around the harbour is called simply Methill, while Innerleven is given its alternative name of Dubby Side.

The above NGR is of the ruins of the medieval kirk above the south bank of the Leven, in a corner of the modern cemetery.